<p>Shortly after November's Black Tuesday patches rolled out of the automatic update chute, the Microsoft Answers forum started to light up with customers complaining about a wide array of Outlook 2013 problems: Outlook would hang when trying to sync IMAP accounts; trying to set up Out of Office replies on Exchange Server drew bogus "currently unavailabale" messages; Free/Busy data for the Outlook Calendar didn't download; S/MIME certificates wouldn't validate, resulting in repeated credential prompts; among others. Microsoft documented the problems in KB 2837618.</p><p>At the time it seemed like a relatively minor problem that would be diagnosed and fixed quickly. Over the ensuing weeks, reports started surfacing about two inter-related problematic patches, KB 2837618 and KB 2837643. Resolving the Outlook 2013 problems may -- at least in some cases -- involve removing both of the bad patches; removing one or the other might not solve the problem. Microsoft hasn't documented any problems with the latter patch, and we don't yet have definitive word when the problems will be fixed.</p><p>KB 2837618, part of Security Bulletin MS13-094, is a typical, boring Office patch: With a Microsoft-assigned severity of "important" (not "critical"), an Exploitability index of 3, and no known examples in the wild, it was totally forgettable. According to the KB article, the patch "resolves a security vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook that could allow information disclosure when a specially crafted email message is opened or previewed."</p><p>KB 2837643 isn't even a security patch. It's a miscellaneous fix for Office 2013 that coincidentally got rolled out on Black Tuesday. According to the KB article, it fixes a glitch "when you use touch gestures on large-screen devices in PowerPoint 2013" and in other obscure situations.</p><p><a href="http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/botched-outlook-2013-patches-kb-2837618-and-kb-2837643-break-out-of-office-reply-freebusy-and-more-232055">Keep reading...</a></p>